That’s new.
“Hungry?”
His stomach growled and he eyed the whipped cream. “You’ve been surveilling someone kinky again, haven’t you?”
She grinned. “Oooh, I’ve got lots of dirty ideas.”
Half-mast.
“Must have been a congressman.”
“Close. An ambassador.” She smacked her ass. “He was a naughty boy. Are you a naughty boy?”
Leroux gulped, yanking off his shirt as he nodded, a surge of adrenaline fueling him, his lethargy of a moment ago forgotten.
“Then get over here so I can punish you for being such a naughty, naughty boy.”
Full mast.
And then some.
He stepped toward her and she reached forward, grabbing him by the belt and hauling him into the bed. She straddled him, grinding him where it counted, and eyed him like he was a pork roast at a bar mitzvah—forbidden but desperately needing to be eaten.
“I just have one thing to say before you receive your punishment.”
“What’s that?” His voice quivered as he reached for her breasts and she slapped his hands away.
“If Dylan calls, I’m killing him.”
With those words, she mauled him like a tiger, and at times he found himself holding on for dear life, whatever she had seen while on assignment truly awe inspiring and deserving of an NC-17 rating.
And whipped cream had never been so delicious.
It felt like hours, though it probably wasn’t, but if he ever told anyone about this, he’d claim it was. She finally dropped on top of him, as spent as he was, and he felt her smile, her cheek muscles against his bare chest giving her away.
“Done?”
“For now.”
“That was incredible.”
“Yes, yes it was.” She repositioned so she could look at him. “I think we’ll have to do that again sometime.”
Leroux picked up the whipped cream bottle and stuck the end in his mouth, spraying some. He swallowed. “Definitely. Dinner, dessert, and a show, all rolled into one.”
“I do aim to please.”
He leaned forward and gave her a peck. “Oh, you do please. Though that one move did kind of hurt.”
“Which one? You screamed I think three times.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them screams. More like terrified cries of someone unsure of what the hell was going to happen next.”
She grinned and patted his cheek. “Is my little man going to be okay?”
He rolled over, bringing her with him, then wrapped around her, kissing her deeply. “He’ll be fine.” He yawned. “But now he needs sleep.”
She patted his chest. “You’ve earned it.”
Leroux moaned contentedly and closed his eyes, falling asleep within moments, waking up what felt like only minutes later, though the sun was glowing around the edges of the curtains while his phone vibrated impatiently on the nightstand.
Sherrie was nowhere to be found, and the bed smelled sickly sweet from their dessert antics of the night before.
He reached over and grabbed his phone, swiping his thumb across the display. “Leroux.”
“Sir, it’s Sonya. The Director needs you in for a briefing.”
“Regarding?”
“Something to do with the attack. An NSA specialist is coming in. Apparently they know something.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Leroux’s eyebrows rose at a hissing sound from down the hallway. Sherrie stepped into the room wearing a whipped cream bra and panties.
“Make that an hour.”
7
Clayton Hummel Residence
Annapolis, Maryland
Two Years Ago
Clayton Hummel sat in his high-back leather chair, a smile on his face as he leaned forward and pecked at his keyboard. This wasn’t work, this was entertainment. This was joy.
This was love.
Her name was Melanie Driscoll, and they had met online several months ago in a World of Warcraft chatroom. He had a few real-world friends, though he rarely saw them, most of his communication with them now by email or text, his embarrassment over his weight turning him into a shut-in more with each passing day.
But online, he had lots of friends. He was a cybersecurity expert, and though he couldn’t discuss specifics, he was a frequent contributor to discussions—anonymously of course—about all things security related, and was well respected.
And he loved his online games where he could be whatever and whoever he wanted to be. It was there that he had found Melanie, another lonely soul who had screwed up the courage to reach out to him of all people. And instead of ignoring her, this time, this one time, he had responded—though not before reading her profile.
She was his age, from Texas—far enough away that they probably would never actually meet—and loved all things science fiction. Loved Captain Kirk—both versions, Han Solo and Boba Fett, Battlestar Galactica and Stargate—basically his entire hit parade. She read Heinlein and Asimov, and could quote snippets from all his favorite franchises.
She was his soulmate.
And he had responded with a single word.
“Hi.”
Months of nightly chats ensued, getting longer and more involved, and eventually, he had realized he was in love for the first time with a woman who actually knew he existed. He had been in love before, but it had always been from the sidelines, always one way. He had never had the courage to ask anyone out in his entire life, not since a humiliating experience in high school had crushed him, destroying any confidence the chubby senior might have managed to build up.
It had scarred him for life.
But this was different. He could be not himself. He could be the man he always envisioned himself to be. Sexy, witty, confident. He told her everything, though at first carefully filtered, and over time, he found himself slowly lifting the veil over his life, letting some of his insecurities through.
Leading to a revelation.
Through a picture.
She had sent him her photo. She was chubby, like him, yet beautiful, unlike him. It had been such a relief. Her avatar online had been of a sexy blonde elf, his a strapping half-human, half-orc—with pecs and abs. She had opened up to him, and who she truly was, was someone he could see himself with.
He had sent her a photo of when he was in college, with a joke about how he wished he still had his college body—despite weighing in at probably 250 in the picture.
She had loved it, saying he was so cute and she wished she had known him back then. Two weeks later, he sent her a real photo of himself, shot from overhead to try and minimize the fat-effect.
And she had called him handsome.
He had cried, this the nicest thing anyone had said to him in years.
And the fact they had continued to talk, to open up completely with each other, with no more filters, no more lies, no more telling each other what they felt the other wanted to hear—just the complete, unvarnished truth—including the ugliness of their lives as overweight people.
Discrimination was frowned upon. You couldn’t make fun of anyone for their race, religion, handicaps or disabilities, but there was one thing you could do with impunity—make fun of a fat person. Society did it constantly in its movies and comedy, in the way fat people were frowned upon or pointed at, laughed at or insulted.
Fat people were people too, with the same feelings as any other person, and the pointing, the snickering, the laughing, and the straight out rude comments, hurt. They cut to the bone.
When someone at work made a joke about his weight, he’d fire back with a prepared insult—all fat people have them—that would leave him laughing with the room, yet deep inside he’d be hurt and want to curl up into a ball somewhere dark and alone, to cry away his pain.
And it had happened again today at a gathering after work. He had been invited to an impromptu bachelor party. He hadn’t wanted to go, but if he wanted to get anywhere in the NSA, he had to
make his appearances. And when the groom had risen to give a speech, albeit fairly drunk, he had thanked everyone, then spoke of how much he loved the woman he was marrying, delivering a line that Hummel was certain the man had thought was hilarious.
“I think I did pretty damned good landing Rita. She’s a beautiful woman, and as you all know, I’m the ugliest guy in this group, with the possible exception of Clay!”
The laughter had stung, but he had joined in, raising his glass. “Consider yourself blessed!” More laughter and some back slaps ensued, and he had downed his drink, waiting long enough to extricate himself from the festivities with the excuse that it was his sister’s birthday and he had to call. It was a lie, though anything was better than the truth.
He had cried in his car the entire way home, sick of being fat, sick of the constant jokes at his expense, by people too ignorant to realize how wrong it was.
And then to top it all off, Melanie had been offline, leaving him with no one to share his pain with.
A pizza was promptly ordered, a large meat lover’s with hot peppers and pineapple—yes, pineapple—and he had sat going through his emails and newsgroup postings while he waited.
And made a mistake.
Angry at his co-workers, all of whom he was certainly at least twenty IQ points ahead of, he had entered into an argument with someone online, and by mistake, tried to prove his point of the government exploiting vulnerabilities in various operating systems, by stating he worked for the NSA and knew damned well what he was talking about.
This had changed the tone, with people piling on asking him to prove it.
And like an idiot, he had.
He delivered up the vulnerability he had been working on over the past few months. Not the specifics, but just the fact it existed, and how, in general, it worked.
And again, they demanded proof.
His pizza had arrived and he ended the conversation, parking in front of The Big Bang Theory on his PVR, and ate away his anger and pain until his laptop, sitting to his right, finally beeped, and he wiped away his tears as Melanie came online. He had pushed his pizza aside, a smile spreading across his face for the first time in hours.
8
Briefing Room 6A, CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Present Day
“We’re aware of the vulnerability that was exploited.”
Chris Leroux’s eyes narrowed as he exchanged a glance with two of his staff in the packed meeting, Sonya Tong and Randy Child. “For how long?”
The woman standing in front of a large display scratched her nose, NSA Special Agent Janine Graf appearing uncomfortable with her current situation. “Two years.”
National Clandestine Service Chief Leif Morrison leaned forward in his chair, pointing at the chunk of code scrolling on the screen. “You’ve known about that for two years, and you did nothing about it?”
Graf frowned, shifting from foot to foot. “We thought it was contained. It was the NSA’s position that it be kept quiet so it could be used to fulfill our mandate.”
“To spy on Americans,” muttered the young Child, his brain-mouth filter yet to develop.
Leroux gave him a look, Child dropping his head in an attempt to make himself less conspicuous.
Graf glared at him. “To protect our nation from enemies both foreign and domestic.” She redirected her attention to Morrison. “Sir, we’ve used this vulnerability dozens of times over the past two years to collect incredibly valuable information. Because it wasn’t known to the manufacturer, there are no computers using these versions of the operating system that aren’t vulnerable unless they have some pretty serious extra security installed. By not informing the company, we’ve advanced America’s interests by leaps and bounds.”
“And now infected millions of computers worldwide.”
Graf glared at Child. “Does he need to be here?”
Leroux leaned forward as Tong elbowed Child. “He has a point. Because you kept this to yourselves, we’re in the middle of this crisis. If no one else knew about this, then we have to assume either someone finally did discover it—”
“And we’ve found zero evidence of that,” interrupted Child, leaning forward so he could be seen past both Leroux and Tong.
“—or you’ve had a leak.”
Graf’s eyes darted about the room, focusing on anything but those at the table grilling her.
Bingo.
“Who was the leak?” asked Leroux, Morrison smiling slightly at him.
Graf sighed, dropping into the chair at the head of the table. “What I’m about to tell you is highly classified.”
Morrison grunted. “This is the CIA.”
Graf gave him a weak smile. “Of course. Two years ago, I was part of a sting operation, targeting contractors in a routine security operation. We identified various targets with vulnerabilities, then tried to get them to violate the terms of their security clearance.”
“And one did?”
“Yes and no. Clayton Hummel was identified as a possible security risk, and my partner and I were assigned to him.”
Leroux made a note of the name. “What made him a risk?”
“He was a loner who worked on something that could easily be digitally transferred and sold.”
“So we’re targeting lonely people now?”
Leroux held out a hand, pushing Child back in his seat without looking. “What was he working on?”
Graf stared at him for a moment before turning away. She tilted her head and scratched her temple. “The ToolKit.”
Child nearly burst out of his chair, Tong’s hand on his arm the only thing stopping him, but it was Leroux who erupted first. “The ToolKit? Are you kidding me? Are you telling us that the ToolKit might have been stolen?”
Graf’s cheeks went red, along with her ears. “We now believe that, yes.”
Morrison tapped the tabletop, silencing everyone. “What is the ToolKit?”
Leroux turned to his boss. “It’s a nickname for all the methods the NSA uses to hack into computers or networks. Essentially, it is all the vulnerabilities they and others have been able to identify, and how to exploit them. It’s a how-to manual to access pretty much any computer, anywhere.”
Morrison whistled, turning to Graf. “And this is now out there, in the hands of hackers?”
She nodded. “We believe so.”
9
The Equation Group, NSA Headquarters
Fort George G. Meade, Maryland
Two Years Ago
Clayton Hummel closed his eyes as he gripped the memory stick in his fist. The data on it could put him in prison for life, yet he was already in a prison he couldn’t stand. For too many years he had wished he was dead, finished with the pain, finished with the embarrassment and humiliation. And when he finally had been given some hope, some faint hope of escape, it had been crushed.
He had fought with Melanie.
It was the night of the bachelor party, when he had been humiliated in front of all his colleagues. They hadn’t known what they had done to him, how they had stabbed at his emotional scars yet again, the next day acting as if nothing had happened, the only reference to the events the usual unimaginative clichés. “Great party!” “You left too soon!” and various other statements that merely went unacknowledged.
For he had been completely preoccupied.
He had dumped his heart out to Melanie that night, about the pain, about how his so-called friends on the forum had torn him apart, and she had been at first sympathetic, exactly as he had expected.
He had started to feel better.
But he had continued pressing the self-pity, and had gone too far.
“Why don’t you prove them wrong, then, if it’s so important to you?”
“I can’t. I could get fired. I shouldn’t have even said what I did.”
“Then stop whining about it. If you can’t provide them with the proof, then either you’re lying, or you’re telling the t
ruth. It doesn’t really matter to me nor should it matter to you if you’re telling the truth. Just suck it up, be a man, and move on.”
It had hurt more than he could ever have imagined.
It was high school all over again.
“Do you think I’m lying?”
“How am I supposed to know? I hope you’re not. If you are, then you’re not the man I thought you were.” There had been a long pause before she continued, the three dots on the screen indicating she was typing and repeatedly editing before sending her reply. It was that delay that made her words so much more painful, as they were clearly well thought out. “I think I love you, Clay, but I can’t be with a man who won’t stick up for himself. Prove them wrong. Show them what you can do, and that will shut them up, and it will prove to me that you’re a man I can be with for the rest of my life.”
She had gone offline immediately after, and he had sat stunned all evening, staring at her words, spiraling into a pit of despair unlike any he had previously found himself in. He had actually stared around the room, assessing each item in how quickly and painlessly it might be used to kill himself, to end this suffering once and for all.
Though he was too much of a coward for that.
Instead, he had climbed in his car and gone for donuts. His form of suicide. Slow but sure.
Too slow.
As he chowed down on his fourth Krispy Kreme, licking his fingers clean at a stoplight, he had turned his head to see some teenagers in the car beside him staring, one with the phone held up, recording the fat guy pigging out on donuts.
It had enraged him.
He had thrown open his door and grabbed the tire iron from his trunk, charging at the car as it peeled away, leaving him huffing and puffing from the effort, and several cars honking their horns at him, one driving by and tossing the final straw out the window.
“Get back in your car, you fat piece of shit!”
He whipped the tire iron at the man’s car as he pulled away, but it fell short.
Retribution - A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller Book #7 Page 3